amo, amas, amant
by the general girl
Summary: Endings are never as clean as the books make them out to be. — narusaku, chapter 699 and beyond.
1. 1

There are many endings to this story.

—

—

**amo, amas, amant**

**—  
**

**—**

One:

She looks down at them, at these stupid boys that she used to think of as hers—the centers of her world—and heals them. She stops the bleeding and she accepts Sasuke's apology and there are no lingering shadows in her heart, nothing like resentment or anger in her tearful laughter.

Sakura meets Sasuke at the gate with Kakashi and asks him, again, to take her with him because she'd never stopped loving him in the uncomplicated way of a young girl and she still has the good grace to blush. He taps her forehead and she doesn't flinch and she doesn't wonder and she isn't bitter. She doesn't wake up in the middle of the night shaking with nightmares, with her shirt soaked in sweat and the wind howling through broken walls because her village stay lay in ruins.

Naruto becomes Hokage, she marries Sasuke, and they raise a child together. Naruto brings Hinata and their kids over for birthdays and dinners and play-dates, and Sakura looks at their smiling faces across her tidy living room and she is happy—so incredibly, incandescently happy because of how easy this all is, how easy and inevitable and meant to be.

* * *

Two:

But in reality.

In reality Sakura looks down at the two boys lying on the ground, and her mind stops and her entire world narrows to the green chakra around her hands and the bleeding bodies at her feet. Sasuke tells her that he is sorry, and she doesn't say a word—partly because she's concentrating so hard, funneling chakra from the dredges of her reserves, and partly because she doesn't know how to answer him.

There is silence as she finishes cauterizing the wounds, and Sakura feels like her tongue has grown huge and heavy, sticking to the roof of her mouth with all the words that she can't say. She thinks about crying once the healing is done, because that would give her something to do; Naruto and Sasuke know what to do when Sakura cries, it is when she is silent and unmoving that she confuses them.

Instead, Sakura pulls Sasuke to his feet and slings his good arm around her shoulder and Kakashi does the same with Naruto. The four of them stand there, and this is Team Seven again, this is everything that she has ever wanted. Sasuke is a hot, burning weight against her side and when she meets Naruto's eyes over dark spikes, she forces a smile.

He'd kept his promise.

* * *

Sakura sits between Naruto and Sasuke's cots; beyond the seclusion of the thin curtains, the rest of the medical tent buzzes with the sound of nurses and mednin, but in this corner the noise is as muted as the afternoon light spilling through the thick canvas, tingeing everything a soft gold.

Sakura feels as if everything beyond the curtains is moving at breakneck speed, while here in their corner time has slowed to a stop. She can't keep herself from staring at either of the sleeping boys, her eyes unblinking just in case she misses a flutter of the lashes, a slight movement of a hand. They breathe deep and slow, not quite in sync with the other, and in sleep they look younger than she ever remembers them being. It's intimate, her watching while they quietly heal in their dreams, and Sakura's fingers itch with the urge to touch their face, their hair, their hands.

This is no quiet, sterile hospital, and there are no apples for her to peel, but Sakura can do so much more for them now, and she keeps watch long after the sun has set.

Out in the field, Naruto and Sasuke fight their own battles, but here, while they're vulnerable in sleep, she will be their guard.

* * *

Sakura goes to see Sasuke in his holding cell without Naruto sometimes. Given their past history, the guards never let her inside, instead she sits on the ground, fingers clenched around the cold metal bars. She doesn't know what she is trying to accomplish, what she is trying to do.

The apology he'd offered, dying on the ground, hangs in the air during every visit. Sakura still doesn't know what to say. Sometimes, she wants to yell; mostly, she wants answers.

She seems to lose all her words around him, this dark haired man with the red, red eyes. But even if she could unravel her thoughts from her tongue, she couldn't give them to him here, surrounded by eavesdropping guards. It's funny, because even though they're sitting only a few feet apart, even though she thinks this is the closest to an understanding that they have ever come, Sakura has never felt further away from Uchiha Sasuke.

"Sasuke-kun." _Why_?

Sasuke moves, and the guards around them all shuffle and rearrange themselves, but he is only leaning forward, and then he is wrapping his hand around hers. Sakura stares at their intertwined fingers and tries not to cry.

* * *

"Sakura-chan, it's late. You should get back to the tents." Naruto's voice surprises her, and she wonders when he'd learn to be so quiet.

Sakura turns from her spot on the riverbank, and it's dark enough that she can only make out the white of his teeth.

"Come sit with me." Naruto hesitates for a moment, and Sakura has time to frown before she feels him settling next to her on the ground. Their elbows touch.

"Why are you still up?"

"Couldn't sleep, too restless." Naruto's answer is succinct, and Sakura hums in reply. She understands that, the need to keep moving and the need to be useful.

The night air is cool, and Naruto radiates warmth. Sakura struggles against the sudden desire to lean closer but soon gives in, her head sinking against his shoulder. She turns her face against his arm, towards the smell of grass and sunshine, but the blond stiffens underneath her. Sakura presses closer, daring him to move.

Naruto stays stiff but still, and in the heavy cover of darkness Sakura almost wants to ask him, _what's next_?

Because there are expectations now that Naruto and Sasuke have finally put their demons to bed, an expectation of where their story will go and who they'll be. But there is still war in her bones, war and loss, and Sakura doesn't know if she is ready.

"I don't know, Sakura-chan." His answer startles her, and she realizes that she must have spoken out loud.

Finally, Naruto stands, and she misses the heat of him almost immediately.

"But we'll figure it out together. Get some rest, okay?"

Sakura stays by the riverbank long after he's gone, and wonders when it'd become so difficult to talk to her closest friend.

* * *

Sakura dreams: she dreams of snow on the ground and her mouth against Naruto's ear; she dreams about her hand holding a kunai to a fan-emblazoned back; she dreams them dead on the ground, like Neji, eyes open but unblinking even as she pumps chakra into their broken bodies; she dreams that she is holding their hearts, one in each hand, rhythmically pumping them and knowing that if she ever stopped they would die; she dreams not of war but of the aftermath.

She dreams of a hand wrapped around hers, and the fingers are not long and pale.

* * *

They only stop the rebuilding to attend the funerals. Every loss is heavy, and Naruto always stands at the front of the crowd, she and the rest of Team Seven flanking him. Sometimes, there are looks and dirty hisses. Sakura usually draws Sasuke closer to her side, and Naruto silences anyone who dares to say anything too overt with a single look. No matter how damaged, no matter his reasons, Sasuke is their's.

The Uchiha never acknowledges the baited whispers, and Sakura knows he has heard far worse.

Sakura can see that Naruto blames himself for each and every death, and she wishes that she knew how to pound it into his skull that the only reason they are all still standing here today is because of him. He is always withdrawn during the funerals, but today, today he hasn't spoken a single word to anybody. Today they are saying goodbye to Neji.

The Hyuuga clan are gathered at the front of the assembled villagers, and Naruto stands beside Hinata as she addresses the crowd, her voice soft but steady. "Neji-san was more than just a branch member of the family…Neji-san was my cousin, he taught us that we could outgrow the hatred and indoctrination of our past history. Just like Naruto-kun, he inspired us to change and rise above ourselves by becoming more than the clan ever expected him to be."

Naruto smiles at the end of the speech, and even though Sakura is standing at the back of the muttering crowd, assembled with her team and the rest of the Rookie Nine, she can see the small movement of Hinata's hand reaching out and grasping Naruto's fingers. Sakura has a sudden vision of herself running through the crowd and up, up, up the podium and tearing the Hyuuga heiress away.

She blinks and it's gone.

* * *

Sakura watches Naruto and Sasuke bicker after a (one-armed) sparring match, and she thinks that there isn't a single thing in the world that can compare to this.

"Are you going to join them, hag?" Sai emerges from the shadows of the trees behind her, and Sakura shrugs. She doesn't want to interrupt the fight, because for the past few weeks, every time she has joined the two Naruto had made a hasty excuse to leave her alone with Sasuke.

Sakura doesn't know how to approach Sasuke on her own, but she's learned to pretend that everything makes sense. Sasuke isn't ready to tell her, and Sakura isn't sure she was ready to hear the answer either.

Still, she wishes that Naruto would stop leaving, because aren't they a team?

Sakura thinks again about the roles that they're all expected to play.

She finally corners him one day, sitting on the outskirts of the village perimeters hunched over a pile of half-sharpened kunai.

"You can't keep avoiding me forever, you know."

Naruto doesn't look up from his weapons. "I'm not avoiding you."

"Look at me."

His movements still, and it takes a long second for him to finally look up. When he does, Sakura is staggered by how intense the blue of his eyes are; she realizes that this is the first time in weeks that he has looked at her directly.

Again her dreams: snow on the ground, and her voice at Naruto's ear; her lips against his skin. She resists the urge to lean down and touch him.

And then he's looking away again. "I haven't been avoiding you, Sakura-chan."

Sakura isn't sure whether she wants to punch him or grab onto him—maybe both, in that order. Instead she sinks down to her heels and tries to meet his eyes again, and even she is aware that her voice is pathetically needy when she says, "Yes, yes you have! I don't know why, I just…we're still a team, aren't we? We're still friends?"

He looks at her again then, and the grin she receives is both familiar and not. "Of course! Team Seven is forever, Sakura-chan!"

Before she can stop him, before she can call him out, Naruto has gathered all his weapons and left. At the very least he'd had the grace to walk away instead of using the shunshin, but then Sakura realizes that's probably only because he couldn't form the seals with only one arm.

She should have grabbed him.

* * *

Sakura sees Naruto with Hinata sometimes, talking quietly around the village, and she can't help but remember the other woman standing up to Pein, her voice unwavering as she told Naruto to look at her, that she had been the one to love him all along.

Sakura is happy for them. She wants to be happy for them. She wants to forget snow on the ground and his voice in her ear and the tight feeling in her chest when she watched him overcome all the hate in his life to become the hero that he'd always wanted to be.

Sakura thinks about Sasuke and wishes that things were as simple as they used to be.

* * *

"You're leaving already?" Once again Sakura stands at Konoha's gates, and once again Sasuke stands in front of her, ready to leave.

This time though, she isn't alone, and she's grown enough to understand his need for both time and space: Sasuke needs it to disentangle himself from the lies and the hate and the bloodshed, to figure out who he'd been before the vengeance and the war. Sakura understands, but her heart still twists at the thought of him leaving so soon, only months after they'd gotten him back.

"I'll be back."

In those words is a promise, and Sakura finally trusts him enough to let him ago.

* * *

But Naruto.

"Stop running away from me!"

"Sakura-chan, let go."

She refuses, her fingers curling around the sleeve of his new prosthetic arm. "Just stop, tell me why you've been avoiding me, tell me what I did wrong."

Naruto still isn't looking at her, and she feels like she's choking on air. Her office at the newly reconstructed hospital feels impossibly small with the two of them in it, but Naruto fills the space like he always does when he walks into a room, and she's sick and tired of watching him go.

He avoids her question and says instead: "I have to go see Kakashi-sensei about some council business."

Sakura bites her lip so hard that she draws blood, but she doesn't let go. She knows she's being selfish, but just this one last time, this _one last time_…

"No." She cheats, enhancing the last tug with a little bit of chakra, and Naruto is whirling around to face her; his eyes are wild and suddenly Sakura is almost scared.

"What do you want, Sakura-chan? Can't you see that I'm trying to make this as easy as possible? Aren't you happy?" The _with Sasuke_ is left unsaid, and Sakura wonders at what Naruto must have imagined happening every time he left her alone with the last Uchiha.

"No," she says again, and she's suddenly pulling him closer, and closer, until their faces are a hair's breadth away. His blue eyes are shuttered, and she thinks that he must not have forgotten that snowy day either.

"Sakura-chan…" He exhales her name across her lips and Sakura finally lets go of his arm to press her hands to his cheeks, her thumbs tracing the lines of his whiskers.

Sakura kisses Naruto.

* * *

Sakura kisses Naruto, and the world doesn't end.

His mouth is still against hers for a long heartbeat, but then he's moving, his chapped lips slanting over her own again and again and again. He steals whatever breath she has left in her lungs and she's only vaguely aware of his hands slipping down to grip her hips, the heat branding her. He jerks her closer to him and Sakura gasps, her lips parting in surprise. Naruto takes advantage and licks his way into her mouth, and she has one dizzying moment to register the fact that he tastes like dango before he's pushing her away.

Sakura stares at him, her heartbeat pounding in her ears, nd wonders when the world had narrowed to the rapid rise and fall of their chests and the burning blue of his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he mutters, and before she has a chance to compose herself, to stop him, Naruto is gone.

* * *

Sakura thinks about the roles that they're expected to play, and she wants to splinter them like she would a mountain or a tree.

She doesn't see him for a week.

* * *

Sakura dreams of large hands and broad backs and tan skin salty underneath her tongue. She dreams about snow on the ground and she dreams about confessions, and then Sakura dreams about blood.

_Shhh, it's alright Sakura-chan, I'm here, you're okay._

In the morning, she wonders if she'd also dreamt him holding her through her nightmares.

—

**tbc**

* * *

**note:** Surprise? I'm sorry, this is complete and utter trash because I haven't written anything creatively in an embarrassingly long time, but then the finale happened and I found out I cared way more than I thought I did, so.

Part two will be from Naruto's perspective, and how soon that will be up depends on how badly I'm going to fail my quant exam. As always, reviews and concrit are appreciated (yes, I know I'm rusty)! Thank you for reading.


	2. 2

**note:** So...it's been a while.

—

—

Naruto thinks he should be better than this. He thinks it should be easier to come back to himself, to separate the past from the present, to not become confused by names and faces that he isn't sure he really knows. It's all over, the war is done. This is supposed to be the start of his real life.

He wonders why he feels so stuck.

* * *

Naruto had been awake in that tent, his entire body strung tight and too aware of her hands skimming through his hair, the tips of his fingers. She had finished healing him by then, but she hadn't stopped touching him. He desperately never wanted her to stop.

With his eyes closed, in that silence, he could be selfish. He could pretend that they were alone, that Sakura-chan was touching him like he'd always, in dreams, wanted her to; that Sasuke-teme hadn't been three feet away, an unanswered question between his best friend and Sakura thick in the air between them. With his eyes closed and her fingers in his hair, pretending had been the easiest thing in the world.

* * *

"Hello, Naruto-kun." Hyuuga Hinata is waiting for him outside of his small apartment. Her back is pressed as close to the wall of the building as humanly possible, but when passersby give her curious, lingering looks, she meets their gaze with a steady stare of her own.

Naruto smiles at her, and her cheeks warm into that familiar pink. "Hey Hinata, what'd you need?"

Naruto isn't stupid, he may have been oblivious to the girl's attentions before, but she'd faced a god for him, had bled for him in a way that few people ever had. His heart thumps in yearning, but he can't pretend that it's for the girl in front of him. Naruto isn't so cruel.

"I thought…if you are not busy, if you do not mind, that maybe we could have lunch together? And talk?"

"As friends," she adds after a moment.

"As friends," he repeats, holding out his hand. Hinata takes it softly, hesitantly, and he can feel her pulse hammering through the thin skin of her wrist. It's a very explicit intimacy, and Naruto almost snatches his hand back because he doesn't have the right and he can't give Hinata what he thinks she wants, what she deserves.

But Hyuuga eyes are perceptive, and Hinata quickly drops his hand. The silence lingers for just a second too long, and Naruto can't tell if the small smile on her face is forced.

"Alright, Naruto-kun…Ramen?"

The blond rubs his head sheepishly, "Nah, let's try something new today, Hinata-chan."

* * *

Hinata is kind, and beautiful, and has wept her life-blood for him. She has uncomplicatedly, steadfastly, loyally loved him since before he'd ever done anything to deserve even a measure of what she gave. He could cling to her, Naruto knows, but he still isn't worth it, and what has he ever done for this girl?

They eat onigiri in silence in a quiet spot near the Hyuuga compound, and every time their fingers touch Naruto feels the heat of Hinata's blush. She looks at him with stars in her eyes but no expectations on her lips. Naruto wants to yell at the unfairness of it all. He doesn't deserve her; he doesn't want her. And that truth makes him feel the worst of all.

_So self-centered_, _Naruto-kun_, an amber-eyed snake had once said to him, right before he sank his fangs into his best friend's flesh.

This isn't about him. And Hinata is entitled to so much more. Naruto swallows and drops the half-eaten rice ball onto the cheap paper plate, rubs the slightly sticky hand over his eyes, tries to forget Sakura's fingers in his hair, her voice soft in his ear.

"I'm sorry, Hinata." She knows without asking, and even if her smile is wobbly, he feels the sincerity right down to his bones. Naruto wishes he could love her.

* * *

"You're not staying?'

Sasuke's eyes don't waver from the training post in front of him. Tsunade's still working on constructing their prosthetic arms, but the Uchiha hadn't let something as _stupid_ as a missing limb stop him from training. Of course.

_Ass_, Naruto adds in his head after a beat of silence, half-fond.

Just as his patience is about to run thin, Sasuke nods. "I think it'll be a while yet before I can come back, before I can feel like myself again."

Naruto understands, but—

"What? But this was what we fought for—Dammit, Sasuke-teme, what about Sakura-chan? How could you just leave her—!"

Sasuke finally turns to look at the blond, slumped and sweaty against a spindly tree from his own drills. "You underestimate her. Idiot."

The insult is a familiar afterthought, and Naruto snarls with half-hearted indignation. He doesn't _underestimate_ Sakura-chan. If there is one person who knows very personally just what she's capable of, it's him.

"What the fuck does that mean? How are you going to hurt her like this again—Fuck, you asshole!"

Swearing at the kunai that'd just landed inches from his face, Naruto pushes himself to his feet, and the two men begin.

* * *

God, Naruto doesn't _underestimate_ Sakura-chan. She holds a special kind of power over her two oldest teammates. Power that comes from having been failed in the worst of ways. She could cut them both deep with just a look, just a word.

With just the shame.

* * *

And even in his dreams, she owns him.

In waking, he'd memorized the callouses on her palms from pulling her up off the floor time after time as they'd trained together. In his sleep, the roughness of her hands against his bare skin contrasts with the softness of her touch. He can't see her, he has never dared to imagine what she would look like underneath that red shirt, the pale skirt. Sometimes there's a glimpse of strong, tanned thighs and a slender arm, the swell of her breasts underneath red fabric, but he doesn't think he's capable of imagining anything that could compare with the reality.

His nights are either filled with her or his nightmares, and if it's the former, Naruto never fails to wake up hard and aching, sweat slicking his skin. He never touches himself, keeps his hand pinned to his side.

He has no right.

* * *

The nightmares don't come as often as Naruto thinks they should. The fact that he'd only lost an arm, it doesn't feel like enough penance for all the friends who'd died in his place.

When they do come though, tremors wrack his body and he throws up until he's dry-heaving in the darkness on all fours. It's disgraceful; he should be strong enough to bear the memories, it's the least he can do for Neji, for Ino's father, for Gai. For all the jounin and chunin and genin who'd fallen, who hadn't held the weight of legends in their hands and their eyes, who'd died simply because Konoha had asked them to.

Naruto struggles to extricate himself from his twisted sheets, his skin clammy with sweat. He'd closed his windows against impending summer rain, but now his apartment is stiflingly hot and humid. The air is heavy, sticky like molasses, and the darkness is silent and still. He staggers for the window and nearly falls out of it trying to open it with his one good arm.

Slumped against the windowsill, his chest heaving with his greedy gasps of the cool night air, Naruto's lips quirk into a wry half-smile, "Heh, what a hero."

It does rain that night, and everything around his window gets drenched, but Naruto doesn't care. He doesn't think he can take the quiet again, it reminds him too much of being trapped under the red moon.

* * *

Sakura keeps trying to meet his eyes, and her hands—determined, strong, capable—they constantly reach for him. Naruto doesn't understand it; he's going half-mad trying to figure her out. He's doing the best he can, trying to adjust to life after the war, to their happily-ever-after, but Sakura keeps saying the wrong things and she keeps goddamn touching him, and Naruto doesn't know how much more he can take.

"I'm doing the right thing, aren't I? Sasuke-teme's back and I'm trying to leave them alone to do…whatever it is they want to do. Sasuke says I'm underestimating Sakura-chan but what the hell does that even mean? Isn't this supposed to be the easy part?" Naruto raises himself onto one elbow and looks expectantly down at the Yondaime's giant stone face. Silence answers him.

Sighing in frustration, the blond's head drops back against his arm, the rock pleasantly warm under his body. He tries to imagine what his father would do; what advice he would have doled out. Then Naruto remembers the few brief moments he'd spent with Minato and Kushina...Okay, maybe his father wouldn't have been so helpful after all.

* * *

Naruto doesn't know if he'll ever be able to get the smell of ash and flame out of his nose. He's seen so many funeral pyres being lit in the months since the end of the war that he swears the searing red of the fire has been permanently imprinted on the back of his lids. Every death is hard, but Sasuke and Sakura-chan stay close by his side, so Naruto finds the strength.

The funerals for the fallen that he hadn't known had been bad, but when the faces in the caskets belonged to people that Naruto had been familiar with, people that he'd fought with, when he only had empty coffins to stare into because the bodies were too badly destroyed, or lost, that was worse.

And the night before Neji's funeral, he'd cried for the first time since the end.

When he leaves his apartment the next morning, Hyuuga Hinata is waiting for him by his front door, covered head to toe in the same simple black clothes he himself is wearing.

Ignoring the discomforting sense of deja-vu, Naruto raises a hand in greeting. "Good morning, Hinata-chan."

After that first awkward lunch together, he and Hinata had forged a tentative friendship. Naruto wasn't trying to find a substitute for Sakura-chan per se, it was just that sometimes he needed time away from the other members of Team Seven, from the stifling weight of the council's expectations.

He can tell that the other girl is nervous; her knuckles are white with the evidence of her anxiety.

"Naruto-kun…For Neji-san's funeral today…will you stand with the rest of the clan? He was much closer to you than he was to me, and I think he would have liked it…if you were there too."

Naruto tries to say yes, to agree and to reassure, but it's impossible to string together a sentence. He settles for a trembling smile instead, and Hinata meets it with a watery smile of her own.

* * *

Sakura had been quiet when Naruto informed his teammates that he wouldn't be with them today. She'd looked at him with creases between her eyes, a sight that he was getting used to nowadays, but she'd voiced no objection. Sasuke had simply nodded.

Now from his vantage point at the front of the crowd, Naruto instinctively seeks out Sakura's distinctive pink hair. He finds her at the back of the group, standing close to Sasuke. The black sleeves of their shirts are touching. Her eyes are fixed on the speaker—Gai, for once solemn and subdued—and she doesn't seem aware of the proximity at all. Naruto swallows; was this how the bastard and Sakura always looked together? At-ease, her brightness a contrast to the Uchiha's dark hair and pale skin. Somebody in the crowd bumps into Sasuke, and the man tenses, instinctively moving even closer to Sakura. She looks at Sasuke and smiles, just for a fraction of second, before her attention is once again fixed on Gai. The exchange had lasted only moments, but Naruto feels like he has been gutted.

Maybe this is how it's supposed to be.

By the time Naruto forces himself to look away, Gai has finished speaking, and Hinata takes his place at the podium. Naruto shifts his attention to her, and the girl's speech, said with quiet conviction, ekes out a genuine smile from him. At the end, Naruto slips his hand into Hinata's and whispers, "Neji would have been proud."

* * *

"You can't leave."

Sasuke actually manages to look amused. "Are you really going to try and stop me, dead-last?"

Naruto kicks off from where he's sitting on top of Sasuke's kitchen counter. The Uchiha had taken residence in one of the few buildings left standing after the war. Like Naruto's own apartment, the abandoned complex is in one of what used to be Konoha's seedier neighborhoods. After the attacks, all utilities had stopped and most of the building's former tenants had chosen to move to the temporary housing in Konoha's more reputable areas instead.

When Naruto offered to let Sasuke bunk with him, the Uchiha had decided that he would rather live in this shithole with other squatters for company instead. Nobody mentioned the perfectly intact Uchiha district.

"You're not supposed to leave yet. We still need you here. Sakura still needs you here."

Sasuke pauses in his packing, and turns to survey the blond. Even though his eyes are dark, Naruto can feel the Rinnegan beginning to flare in Sasuke's left eye.

"You really are stupid. Sakura doesn't need me, have you even tried talking to her since everything happened?"

"I talk to Sakura-chan!"

Sasuke sighs and turns back to his half-filled bag. "Whatever. If you can't figure it out on your own, I'm not going to help you."

* * *

"You can't keep avoiding me forever, you know."

Naruto keeps his eyes on the pile of half-sharpened kunai in front of him, but the red and pink of Sakura remains in his peripheral vision, impossible to ignore.

"I'm not avoiding you." Speaking is difficult, and the lie rolls like boulders off his tongue. Once, Naruto had told Sakura the one thing that he couldn't abide by were liars. Now, the hypocrisy threatens to bubble from his mouth, and it's a struggle to swallow the guilt stuck in his throat.

"Look at me."

Because it's Sakura-chan, it's impossible for Naruto to disobey. She's backlit by the sun, her hair in disarray, as if disturbed by agitated hands. Naruto wants to pull her close, smooth the pink strands, brush the furrows from her forehead. He ignores the urges and tries to avoid her eyes, but _it's Sakura-chan_, so he meets her gaze for the first time in days and the green is a sucker-punch to the gut.

He has to look away.

"I haven't been avoiding you, Sakura-chan."

There's a sharp intake of breath, and then Sakura's dropping in front of him and rocking back on her heels. Her face is so close, he can feel the heat coming off of her, he can count each individual eyelash and make out the dark ring circling the green of her eyes. Something roars inside of him, and Naruto realizes it's _want_.

He barely hears Sakura's question, is barely able to respond with a practiced smile and practiced words. If he doesn't get out of here _right this second_, Naruto knows, he will burst and do something that they'll both heavily regret.

(_He thinks it's almost worth it._)

But even if Naruto doesn't think he could ever stop himself from wanting Sakura, he would rather rip himself apart than completely cut her out of his life. It'll always be like this for them, Naruto realizes, a game of push and pull, give and take. How much more could she give him? How little would he be willing to take?

They're supposed to be a three-man team, but even after Sasuke's departure, Naruto feels like there'll never be room for a third.

* * *

"You seem distracted."

Naruto nearly jumps, and he looks up to meet Kakashi's inscrutable gaze. He'd been spending the afternoon with the older man so the new Rokudaime could give him a lesson in the finer points of politics. Naruto may not have been a candidate for the sixth Hokage, but it's no secret that he's expected to take the mantle of the seventh.

"If you think this is too boring…" Kakashi's tone is icy, and Naruto can't blame him; these lessons are just as excruciating for his former teacher as they are for him. They're even worse now that not thinking about Sakura-chan occupies so much of his time.

"Sorry, Kakashi-sensei. It's just more complicated than I thought it would be."

Kakashi puts down the papers he'd been holding to fully regard Naruto, who squirmed under his gaze. When he speaks again, it's with a deliberate slowness.

"You know, as somebody who has experience with this sort of thing, most of the time it's really not. Opportunities are rare, take advantage of them."

Naruto thinks there's a pretty good chance that Kakashi hadn't been talking about inter-village politics either.

* * *

"No."

Naruto doesn't know if this a nightmare or a daydream, only that Sakura is pulling him inexorably closer, and the heat of her fingers on his new arm is burning straight through his clothes and under his skin.

He waits for her to stop, for the motion to end, but she presses herself against the lines of his body until he's remembering another heavy silence, another time when she'd pulled herself flush against his back. He hadn't let himself think of that day since it'd happened, the words he'd always wanted to hear dropped from her lips like blood money: any lie to keep him safe.

"Sakura-chan…" her name slips despite himself, and her lips instinctively part as his exhale ghosts over her skin. Naruto isn't sure if he's still breathing. He thinks he might die right this second and not realize it.

Sakura doesn't say anything, but her eyes are huge and green, the pupils blown. She lets go of his arm, only to lift her hands to his face, her fingers barely tracing over the lines etched on his cheeks.

Naruto only has a moment to realize that the buzzing that's drowning out all other noise is in his own head when Sakura leans forward and presses her lips to his.

* * *

The world tilts. He's stopping and starting all at once.

_This is just a dream_.

He kisses her back.

It's not.

* * *

Naruto runs. He runs like a coward but he can't escape the memory of her soft mouth parting under his with a wet gasp, or the sound of her quiet moans as he'd poured all of his frustration, his anger and his confusion into that kiss.

She owns him completely now, body and soul.

—

**tbc**

* * *

**note: **Obviously the exam went terribly if it took me this long to write the chapter. (Actually, it's been so long that I don't even remember if I did well or not.) Concrit is appreciated, and I'll try my best to have the next and last chapter out as soon as possible!


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